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  • Publication
    Biotransformation of fluorophenyl pyridine carboxylic acids by the model fungus Cunninghamella elegans
    1.Fluorine plays a key role in the design of new drugs and recent FDA approvals included two fluorinated drugs, tedizolid phosphate and vorapaxar, both of which contain the fluorophenyl pyridyl moiety. 2.To investigate the likely phase-I (oxidative) metabolic fate of this group, various fluorinated phenyl pyridine carboxylic acids were incubated with the fungus Cunninghamella elegans, which is an established model of mammalian drug metabolism. 3.19F NMR spectroscopy established the degree of biotransformation, which varied depending on the position of fluorine substitution, and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) identified alcohols and hydroxylated carboxylic acids as metabolites. The hydroxylated metabolites were further structurally characterised by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), which demonstrated that hydroxylation occurred on the 4′ position; fluorine in that position blocked the hydroxylation. 4.The fluorophenyl pyridine carboxylic acids were not biotransformed by rat liver microsomes and this was a consequence of inhibitory action, and thus, the fungal model was crucial in obtaining metabolites to establish the mechanism of catabolism.
      335Scopus© Citations 9
  • Publication
    Evaluation of fluorinated biphenyl ether pro-drug scaffolds employing the chemical-microbial approach
    Incorporation of fluorine in a drug can dramatically affect its metabolism and methods to assess the effect of fluorine substitution on drug metabolism are required for effective drug design. Employing a previously developed chemical-microbial method the metabolism of a series of fluorinated biphenyl ethers was determined. The substrates were synthesized via Ullmann-type condensation reactions between bromotoluene and fluorophenol. The ethers were incubated with the fungus Cunninghamella elegans, which oxidises xenobiotics in an analogous fashion to mammals, generating a number of hydroxylated biphenyl ethers and acids. The propensity of the fluorinated ring to be hydroxylated depended upon the position of the fluorine atom, and the oxidation of the methyl group was observed when it was meta to the oxygen. The experiments demonstrate the applicability of the method to rapidly determine the effect of fluorine substitution on CYP-catalysed biotransformation of pro-drug molecules.
    Scopus© Citations 7  357